Even If i Walk Alone

Instructing and encouraging you to live your life as a disciple of Jesus

I John

Rededicate

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It doesn’t take much to see our world is heading in the wrong direction. For those of us in the West, I believe we must accept our own share of responsibility for the way things are. After all, we’ve had religious freedom for a long time. We’ve had knowledge of our Savior for centuries. Somewhere along the line we stopped living as if Jesus was the only thing that mattered and found ourselves more and more seeking our own comfort and security. How can we who have been given so much think we will escape judgment for how little we have done?

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We not only are disobeying Christ’s command to tell everyone about Him (Matthew 28:18-20), but we no longer live as if Jesus is the Lord we claim Him to be. So, we are both disobedient and hypocritical. This is who we have become. This will be our legacy. Is that okay with you? Do you think this is the victorious life to which we have all been called (1 John 5:3-5)?

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Doing the Work

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Without a doubt, we are saved solely by the grace of God; there is nothing we can ever do to earn our salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9). On our own, we are all disqualified from salvation, because each of us has sinned and fallen short of God’s standard for eternal life (Romans 3:23). If not for the loving grace and mercy of God, we would all be lost and without hope. Thanks to His love though, we need not despair.

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Because of His amazing grace and the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, we can be saved from the hopelessness of sin. We can have hope because death is not the end for those who place their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. I believe the sincerity of our faith is proven by doing the work He has given us to do (Ephesians 2:10). Our salvation is free, but it is not cheap.

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Casual Indifference

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I think we have the habit of not taking sin seriously enough. We all sin every day, but how much does it truly bother us? I was reading in Ezra and observed his reaction to his own sin. It says in Ezra 9:6, he was so embarrassed and ashamed of his sin he couldn’t even lift his eyes to face God. He recognized his sins and the sins of his people were higher than his head and his guilt was as high as the heavens.

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When was the last time you considered your sin like this? We are far too casual in response to our own sin. We know Jesus has paid the price for us, so no matter what we do, we’re covered. Somehow this has led us not into deeper repentance, but into casual indifference.

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Living Linearly

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In my constant quest to simplify and strip away all which is not Christ in my life, I have been thinking recently about living linearly. It seems more than ever these days, we tend to live our lives in parallel. We never do one thing at once. We read or watch television while we eat. We do daily chores with our attention divided between the squawk of the television or the words and beats flowing through our headphones.

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To increasing peril, we use our phones while we drive. Even in conversation, we spend much of it thinking of what we want to say next rather than focused on what is being said to us. Instead of focusing on one thing at a time and living linearly, we are distracted by many things and constantly processing our life in parallel.

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The Myth of the Sinner’s Prayer

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I grew up in churches where an invitation was given at the end of every service. As part of the invitation, people were invited to receive Christ and were led through “the sinner’s prayer”. This prayer was holy and awesome. It was the key to the Kingdom of God, after all. While as kids you might have messed around throughout the service, you didn’t dare misbehave at this point.

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Variations of the same prayer have been around for a couple of hundred years and it persists to this day, although it’s use and invitations, in general, are far less common in churches today, especially those of the mega variety. There’s nothing wrong with saying this prayer. It’s one way to confess your need for Jesus. The problem is it’s not Biblical and it’s not enough.

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